Not Seeing God

... these experiences of darkness had opened me up to a new way of seeing -- or, more accurately, not seeing God. Benedictine prioress Mary Margaret Funk writes about the three traditional renunciations required of monks: "First, we must renounce our former way of life and move closer to our heart's desire, toward the interior life. Second, we must do the inner work (of asceticism) by renouncing our mindless thoughts ... Third, and finally, we must renounce our own images of God so that we can enter into contemplation of God as God." In other words, we must give up our natural human longing to understand what is beyond our capacity to do so. If we do not, we risk worshiping an idol.

By Way of Grace: Moving from Faithfulness to Holiness
by Paula Huston

This idea of renouncing our own ideas of God is one that stays with me. We try to understand things, to puzzle out where they fit, how they work, what they look like (even if only in our mental landscape). That is how we are made, of course, part of our essence to think like that.

But God is beyond our comprehension. After reading St. Theresa of Avila's thoughts about the soul's beauty in The Interior Castle, our book club discussion centered a lot on how we don't know our soul's intrinsic beauty and so we ignore it in ignorance. That is why we must work so hard to clear the way to see things and especially our souls clearly.

Thinking of the above quote, which is also similar to something that St. Theresa says in the book, we basically came to the same conclusion as Paula Huston. We will let God show us what of Himself that He will. Our job lies elsewhere.

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity